The Intimate Diaries of Everyday People: A Tale of a Search

En mi próximo libro,
The Intimate Diaries of Ordinary People: An Invisible Writing
(CSIC, 2026)
, 
con prólogo de
Philippe Lejeune
, que es la autoridad mundial de la materia, además de inspirador de mi estudio, doy cuenta de la busca de estos diarios de la gente común. Son textos invisibles, desconocidos y, por tanto, normalmente ignorados. Es decir, indago y analizo los diarios, que llevan muchas personas, sin ánimo o pretensión de publicarlos. Tampoco autorizan ni permiten normalmente su lectura a nadie, de tal modo que estos diarios se podrían calificar como estrictamente “íntimos”. También intento averiguar por qué y para qué, cómo y cuándo los escriben.
Pero, ¿cómo estudiar lo que no se conoce ni se puede leer?, se preguntará el lector de estas líneas
. La dificultad parecería en principio insalvable, pero, en realidad, exigía una metodología adecuada que lo hiciera posible. Para marear estos escollos y resumir los resultados obtenidos, escribo el relato que sigue.

In September 1990, provisto de una beca de la Junta de Andalucía, viajé a París para conocer a Philippe Lejeune y trabajar bajo su dirección durante un mes. Lejeune había accedido amablemente a mi petición y quise aprovechar su magisterio. Yo había leído sus libros sobre el género autobiográfico (The Autobiographical Pact, 1975; Je est un autre, 1980; y Moi aussi, 1986) y quería comentar con él mi interpretación de sus trabajos, con el fin de aplicarlos al estudio de la Literatura Española.

Como llegué unos días antes de la fecha acordada, me entretuve recorriendo las librerías del Barrio Latino, y en el bulevar de St. Germain des Prés, en La Hune (ya desaparecida), encontré un libro de Lejeune que acababa de aparecer: La pratique du journal personnel: Enquête. Lo compré y lo leí con avidez. Me interesó la proyección sociocultural y el original análisis de los diarios, un género poco estudiado entre nosotros. Me sorprendió también el ingenioso método que permitía investigar unos textos que nadie hasta entonces había podido leer por inéditos y secretos. En los datos de su estudio, realizado por cuestionario escrito en la región parisina, se demostraba que un relevante porcentaje de personas encuestadas llevaban o habían llevado diario.

The first meeting took place at the northern suburb university in Paris where he taught. Although I arrived shy and fearful (Lejeune’s prestige impressed me), his close, friendly, unpretentious demeanor put me at ease right away. In the course of this first encounter I wasn’t planning to refer to the book on diaries, but the conversation quickly centered on this topic and the theory of the “autobiographical pact” receded into the background. He spoke to me of his interest in the practice of the diary among ordinary people and encouraged me to carry out a similar investigation in Spain. From there I would leave determined to attempt it at least, a decision not unrelated to Lejeune’s contagious enthusiasm. Thus did it all begin.

Además, la situación comenzaba a cambiar justamente en aquellos años iniciales de la década de 1990, cuando se puso de moda, sobre todo entre los poetas, publicar diarios literarios o de escritor, es decir, escritos ya con la previsión de su edición. Por tanto, se hacía difícil aceptar que no se hubieran escrito apenas diarios íntimos en casi toda la centuria precedente, de la misma manera que los hubo en otros países europeos de nuestro entorno cultural. Si en los últimos años el estudio y la edición de textos autobiográficos habían supuesto una innegable “normalización” de la literatura memorialística, la de los diarios estaba todavía pendiente, con la única y señera excepción de una notable antología de diarios íntimos españoles (Granell y Dorta, 1963).

A few years after the initial meeting with Philippe Lejeune, I would publish the first results of my investigation into diary practice in the form of a book: The Invisible Writing: Testimonies about the Intimate Diary (Sendoa, 2000). The book included 32 epistolary testimonies, selected for their interest and thoroughness, from among almost two hundred who answered my call in the magazines Lateral and Qué leer? I requested, timidly, in my appeal that the diarists write me the “biography of their diary,” but the response surprised me because, in addition to being generous and explanatory, some reproduced fragments of their diary and some diarists handed me their adolescence diaries. The print run was 1,500 copies, which sold out completely. In 2010 its editor, the benevolent Joaquín Berasategui, retired, and the publisher disappeared. Therefore, that book has been out of print for years, and many people have searched for it or requested it from me in recent years without being able to fulfill their request.

At the time of its appearance, the book had a certain impact in Spain due to the novelty of its contributions. The print media, El País among others, radio networks (SER, COPE and others) and some television (Tele Madrid) gave media attention to the book. It had less resonance in the Spanish academic milieu, still then not very interested in this variant of ordinary writings. Abroad, the book resonated in France, Italy, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. In these American countries it was read mainly by secondary education teachers and scholars of the history of writings, triggering some didactic experiences and encouragement and promotion of diary writing.

That book is, therefore, the origin of the present one, in which I include the thirty-two selected testimonies. They are now preceded by a first chapter that brings up to date the state of the field of diary studies, situating it contextually, theoretically and historically, within the framework of autobiographical writings. I establish a specific distinction between the “diaries of ordinary people” and the rest of autobiographical writings and, above all, with the so-called “writer’s diaries” or literary diaries. In the second chapter I make a proposal for a “poetics” of the intimate diaries of ordinary people, with an outline of their main characteristics and functions based on the testimonies and diaries collected. In Chapter Four I include a series of studies I carried out in the years following the publication of The Invisible Writing. These are studies that address different aspects of writing ordinary diaries: the practice of diary writing in school age (from high school to university), the adolescent diaries of girls, titled “The Daughters of Anna Frank,” a call for the testimony of ordinary people who keep a diary and the example of the diarist José Fernández Arroyo, a pioneer in the public transmission of his private diaries, who had enthusiastically collaborated in my research. I have decided to also include in this section a study on the diaries of writer Laura Freixas, as an example of an intimate diary of a woman who began keeping it in the hope that someday they would be published. Through her diary she records her human and literary aspirations, attends to the contradictions of a feminist woman who must negotiate with reality the obstacles of a situation of inequality for women and with her own personal demons. It also shows the tensions and stumbling blocks of writing an intimate diary when it moves from notebook to book.

Therefore, I resume the baton I had left in The Invisible Writing, with the advantage that in the past twenty years diaries have gained in interest and knowledge. But I am also aware that the ones I present and study here remain an unknown territory, secret and hidden, to which journalistic and academic criticism have not yet granted or discovered the values contained within. Therefore, this is a militant book that, in addition to making this invisible writing known, advocates and defends the cultural practice of keeping a diary without the aim of turning it into print, because I have the impression that diaries still carry a moral stigma and literary disdain. Morally, diaries and ordinary diarists are considered immature, narcissistic, or simply odd; literarily, diaries remain a minor genre.

However, I believe that, fortunately, we have progressed: one no longer needs to ask permission to write them or publish them, nor to feel guilty about reading them or studying them. Now we recognize many facets, functions and signs of identity in diaries, just as there are many approaches and ways to write them, read them, study them or to use them as a source of literary or anthropological knowledge. The fact that this book can be read is proof of the new situation, so different from what I outlined above.

Reivindicating the diary writing means recognizing it as a haven of peace, where one can reconnect with the intimate self, because it is a safe place, a refuge against the onslaughts of the world, against the emptiness, vertigo and elusiveness of the digital time in which we live. Today we can feel that the threat is omnipresent, and it takes the form of the invasive and uncontrolled use of the internet and social networks. In this context, writing a diary for oneself and with no intention of influencing, fighting or convincing anyone, allows us to recover the lost dialogue with ourselves, which is so necessary to relate well to others and to what surrounds us. Keeping a diary also means freeing oneself from the sterile loss of time, from the tyrannical dependence that continuous exposure on the internet represents. No, I am not suggesting that we throw away the phone, but if we allocated only a third of the time we devote to this great energy usurper to diary writing, our lives might improve. It is a matter of buying a notebook and starting to write. In other words, more notebook and less mobile.